Category Archives: My Project

The Working Classes on TV

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As referenced in my previous post, working class people are often on your tv screens. But is it in a positive or negative way?

Positive representation of the working classes

The Netflix show On My Block is a great example of showing how young people from a less privileged background cope with the chaos around them and are active members of their community within giving into addictions or violence. Whilst it is based in America, I think that it is still relevant as a reference because of its availability on a mainstream streaming platform. This show is also good because it shows how multicultural the working class is, which again, is very relevant to the UK.

Fresh on the block – The Hawk Eye

In The Long Run is a show that is set in the 1980s, and documents life on a council estate in London. It is loosely based on Idris Elba’s childhood and I think paints a realistic picture of what life would have been like for him. I believe he co-wrote this series, and while there are probably some instances of dramatic licence, it rings very true to life.

In The Long Run | Sky.com

The Simpsons are a working class family who go through some of the same struggles as real life working class families eg. Homer needing to get a second job to pay for Christmas when his main job doesn’t give Christmas bonuses to the semi skilled workers.

The Simpsons (TV Series 1989– ) - IMDb

Bob’s Burgers features Bob Belcher buying his family’s clothes secondhand and being embarrassed when a bank manager shows him what a good savings account should look like instead of his. But despite this, his family are happy and functional.

Golden Girls is a series about four widowed and divorced women living together. When watching this show I’ve never thought about them being working class, and I’m not entirely sure they are but when Rose loses her husband’s pension she says this: “You know, every morning when I leave the house, I see this bag lady going through the baggage over on 135th Street. She has everything she owns piled up in one of those old shopping carts. But the other day, for the first time, I noticed, she’s about our age. Oh, you know, you always feel sorry for someone like that, but I wondered, ‘What did she do to get herself into a fix like that?’ I thought, well, she must be lazy, or she must be pretty stupid to let something like this happen to her. But, the truth is, she’s me! God! What am I going to do?” This quote was memorable because it showed a character changing their mind about social class and almost having an epiphany. I think this is rather powerful and shows self awareness that is often lacking in fictional characters.

The Golden Girls: The most treasured TV show ever - BBC Culture

Negative representation of the working classes

Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances. A woman who has married into a middle class family and who flaunts her rich sister to whoever is listening, telling everyone about her pony and her swimming pool. But on the flip side, she hides and avoids her working class sisters and brother in law, even going so far as to climb over walls to avoid them.

30th Anniversary of Keeping Up Appearances - British Comedy Guide

Shameless – The both the US and UK versions focus on poor dysfunctional, working class families where the father is addicted to drugs or alcohol, leaving the children to fend for themselves. The showrunner of the US series said “We have a comedic tradition of making fun of the people in those worlds… The reality is that these people aren’t ‘the other’—they’re people who live four blocks down from you and two blocks over.” However, Shameless is still classed as a comedy series so are they not still making fun of the working classes? And I would still argue that they are pushing stereotypes about working class people, having fathers who are addicts and kids taking care of themselves.

Shameless (TV Series 2004–2013) - IMDb

The Jeremy Kyle Show. A classic mainstay of British television for a long time. And a reason that so many people were wary of so called ‘chavs’ and thought that anyone who was on benefits was a deadbeat. Two people sitting across from each other, making wild accusations and Jeremy Kyle himself stirring up the drama. I would argue that in British society, this show is a huge reason that the working classes are demonised still. A similar show to this in America is Judge Judy, however I think that there are slightly more positive interactions to counteract the stories of working class criminals and morally wrong behaviour. Judge Judy while globally popular, has still attracted a lot of criticism for exploiting people who can’t afford to take their cases to an actual court of law or pay legal fees.

The human bear-baiting of The Jeremy Kyle Show

Benefits Street – a documentary about a street in Birmingham where apparently 90% of the residents claim benefits. The show documented the residents committing crimes, demonstrated how to shoplift and portrayed a situation where no one was committed to finding regular employment and instead depended on their benefits to survive. This show generated a lot of backlash, rightly so in my opinion. From personal experience, having grown up with a parent on benefits and who was desperate to find a job, Benefits Street painted an unrealistic picture. Again, I would say that it fed into a lot of stereotypes that are held about people on benefits. Channel 4 were accused of making ‘poverty porn’ and Ofcom received hundreds of complaints. Even the participants of the show claimed that they were misled about what the show was about and misrepresented on screen.

Benefits Street Series 1 | Love Productions

I am unsure where soap operas would fall – the things that happen to those people are very unrealistic but do they show working class people in a bad light? Not having watched any I don’t think I can speak to this. There are articles online arguing that they are bad for showing working class people but others disagree.

From looking at these tv shows, it is very clear to me that it’s so much easier for tv shows to portray the working class in a negative manner and that people will watch it. For example Benefits Street had record numbers of people watching it, and I highly doubt it was because they identified with the people who appeared on the show. The working class appear to be an easy target to make entertainment out of, and this just perpetuates the negative stereotypes about people who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Working Class Denial

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In a conversation with someone who is considered an expert in the context of my project, I was told that there is no class problem in universities in general, let alone in arts universities. I found this interesting because this person comes from the same town as me and is very working class. Whereas another expert I spoke to who is middle class, admitted to noticing less obviously working class students.

On further reflection, I think this actually makes sense. People who have risen from the working classes to a more eminent position are often quick to distance themselves from their background. For example, Hyacinth Bucket in the tv show Keeping Up Appearances who was desperate to avoid her working class sister and brother in law, going so far as to ignore them in public and clamber over brick garden walls to hide from them.

Quotes From Keeping Up Appearances. QuotesGram

And why wouldn’t you want to distance yourself from your working class roots when “Despite the occasional ‘rags to riches’ storyline, most media representations of working-class communities tend to focus on what these communities lack—not just financially, but also in knowledge, taste and morality. They are constantly depicted as uneducated, poorly dressed and more likely to become criminals.”

Stephanie Lawler, a British sociologist, said in 2005 that “at the heart of middle-class identity, is a feeling of disgust towards working class existence,” and I think that if one has been socially mobile and is now middle class rather than working class, there is an element of disgust towards your roots rather than pride about how far you’ve come.

Whilst there are a lot of tv shows that satirise the working classes eg Little Britain and Shameless, there are shows such as the long running Jeremy Kyle Show or Benefits Street that aim to humiliate or demonise the working classes. Instead of being actually entertaining, the public are expected to laugh at the so called misfortune of the millions of people who are working class. Jeremy Kyle in particular was a vicious show – a live studio audience laughing at families imploding and the guests being incited to violence against each other.

This is a far cry from the hardworking, working class men and women who work multiple jobs so they can feed their families and who do all the jobs that other people turn their noses up at.

But which portrayal of working class society is more memorable?

https://www.media-diversity.org/as-the-media-has-a-reckoning-on-race-and-gender-its-time-to-also-talk-aboutclass/#:~:text=Despite%20the%20occasional%20’rags%20to,more%20likely%20to%20become%20criminals.

Case Study : LAMDA

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Today I saw that LAMDA (London Acadamy of Music and Dramatic Art) has installed QR codes around the school, where students and staff can report microaggressions that they experience in an anonymous way.

I think that something similar could be a viable intervention for my project when we are back on campus, and would be a way of my stakeholders talking about their experiences truly anonymously. Whilst my project is not about microaggressions as such, I think it would be useful to gather data around events that happen on campus that make my stakeholders feel uncomfortable or inferior to their peers. I especially like how LAMDA have asked the people filling this form in to say what they would like to be done about it. If I do a similar intervention then I think it would be interesting to see what my stakeholders would like to see from UAL in terms of things changing or just simply support. An intervention of this sort could also educate universities on why more support for working class students is needed.

I think another good thing about this prospective intervention is that if I asked the gender of the person clicking on the QR code, it would allow me to collect data that is split into genders, which so far has been impossible to find in regards to UAL. It would also allow me to see if one gender is reporting more than another and this could influence my research question.

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/20/report-microaggressions-qr-codes-campus-lamda-students-told/

Second and Third Intervention

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So far in my project I have defined what working class means to me, but I think it is important to find out what it means to my stakeholders too. After all, they are the people that I am trying to help with my project!

So I invited 10 of my stakeholders to meet with me and describe what working class means to them; whether that was verbally, through art or in a written form. I met with 4 online and 6 in person.

From the verbal responses, these are the terms that I wrote down:

There were a lot of repeated words, which I was expecting. However I didn’t expect assumptions to come up as often as it did. I also thought that scapegoat was an interesting word, and it made me think of Chavs by Owen Jones, a book I read as part of my secondary research. This book talks a lot about how the working classes are often used as a political tool to illustrate what is wrong with British society and used as a pawn almost to sway the opinion of the public.

When my stakeholders were observing what each other had written, there was a lot of nodding and agreement. There was also a discussion about certain things, such as the piece of paper that talks about the assumption about not working. I find this very interesting as we were talking about the working class and working is in the name. But after thinking about it, there is an assumption in society that a lot of working class people rely on benefits so I can see why this came up. I think this points to a problem with the way the working classes are represented in popular culture and the way that this perpetuates stereotypes.

Because half of this intervention was online, I decided to send a survey to everyone who participated, with a list of all the responses (except the pictures, I now realise) and ask them to check the boxes next to the words that they connect with most. However, no one had responded to my survey at the time of writing this blog post! I regret not doing this in person as I would have received instant responses and would have gained more feedback which would inform the next intervention iteration. I plan to send follow up emails which will hopefully mean that I get some survey responses and therefore some more feedback and insight from my stakeholders.

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Update 1st September 2022

Six of the participants of my intervention responded to my follow up survey and I found it very interesting that the words that all 6 of these people connected with the most was assumptions, closely followed by stereotyped, seen as lacking ambition, hardworking and underprivileged. I think moving forward I want to dive deeper into what assumptions are being made about these working class students specifically at university, and who is making these assumptions.

Swot Analysis

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I decided to create an updated SWOT analysis for my project, as the last one I did was for my previous question. I found this quite useful as it allowed me to think about my project from a different angle and really interrogate my question and methodologies that I am using.

I feel sure that I will update this as my research project evolves even more and I come across more obstacles.

A Conversation

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Today I met with *Jess, a student at UAl. She very kindly agreed to talk with me, on the understanding that I would change her name and not use any identifying details about her in my project.

I started off by telling Jess about my background and my life, in the hopes of establishing common ground between us. And I think it worked! After I spoke about myself, we started discussing how hard it is to be a working class student at such an elite university. Jess told me that no one knows how badly she struggles to pay rent and that when she runs out of hot water, she uses the shower at her gym. A gym that she was gifted the membership to and has no way to renew when it runs out. Jess told me that she has often googled how to sell photos of her feet to make money but has never gone through with it because it felt dirty. More than once she has downloaded dating apps in the hopes of someone buying her dinner that night.

And then we spoke about UAL.

Jess told me that her course expects her to buy a lot of materials and books, without understanding that not every student on every course has a lot of disposable income. She spoke in depth about how this has made her feel less worthy to be on her course and that she feels alone amongst her classmates. The lack of understanding from her course leaders has made her feel embarrassed about being working class and as though she is inferior to the students around her. Jess spoke about UAL as an organisation that is unfeeling and doesn’t care about the students that are underrepresented amongst the student body. When asked if she was aware of any support for students who are from lower income backgrounds, Jess just laughed. She went on to explain that she feels invisible when she is at uni and she feels ashamed of not being able to wear designer clothes every day or go to Michelin starred restaurants at the weekends.

We finished our conversation by Jess telling me that she wishes things were different, and that UAL could be inclusive to everyone. Not just to the people with big bank accounts.

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Before publishing this blog post, I sent it to Jess to make sure I hadn’t misrepresented her comments or opinions in any way and that she was happy for me to post it, which she was.

Empty Gestures or Meaningful Change?

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“…it is also vital to ensure working-class students as well as ethnic and racial minority (BAME) students are adequately supported once they are at university. Widening access and participation, and the underlying meritocratic sentiments that underpin it, will never amount to more than empty rhetoric and token gestures until students from all class backgrounds feel at home in all higher education institutions”

This is a quote from the study that I was referencing in my previous post and one that has been resonating with me as I’ve been reading diversion and inclusion reports from multiple universities. This is something that I want to make sure is a pillar of my research – I want my interventions to be meaningful and not seen as token gestures.

In the abstract of a study by Genia M. Bettencourt, she says “Belonging was viewed as something that students themselves created rather than was facilitated by institutions. Moreover, while participants expressed varying degrees of support, connectedness, and belonging, they rarely felt valued by institutions that exploited their labor or tokenized their presence under the guise of supporting diversity.”

I find this to be concerning because students should be focusing on studying and having active social lives whilst at university, not relying on each other to set up support networks or being seen as the token working class students. I have to admit, this is something I have been worried about with my research – However unrealistic it may be, I am concerned that UAL could hijack my research and twist it to come across as diverse and inclusive. I think that this could be a possible challenge that I have to overcome and I need to be prepared for this. (Even though I might be overthinking it and it might not happen.). I also think that it is important that every student feels valued by the institution that they are paying thousands of pounds to attend. If you don’t feel valued, then what is the point of paying money to study there?

References:

Bettencourt, G.M. (2021). ‘I Belong Because It Wasn’t Made for Me’: Understanding Working-Class Students’ Sense of Belonging on Campus. The Journal of Higher Education, pp.1–24. doi:10.1080/00221546.2021.1872288.

Reay, D. (2021). The working classes and higher education: Meritocratic fallacies of upward mobility in the United Kingdom. European Journal of Education, 56(1). doi:10.1111/ejed.12438.

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Uncomfortable Interactions

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Most studies focus on working-class students and the ways in which they act or do not act. Yet, the ways in which interactions with middle-class students as well as university administrators and faculty make first generation students feel uncomfortable have not gained similar attention. (Lareau & Ferguson, 2017, p. 1)

I came across this quote when it was referenced in another article and it stuck in my mind. The study it is taken from was titled Cultural exclusion of upwardly mobile college students and published in 2017 in The American Sociological Association. The interactions that my stakeholders have with their peers and university staff is something that I had not thought about. The lack of support for working class students may not just be the lack of a visible support system but in being stereotyped by the people that are meant to be teaching them, whether knowingly or unconsciously.

This is definitely something that I will be discussing with my stakeholders. I am curious how they feel about their interactions with their tutors and peers, and whether this quote is actually true or just speculation.

However, a problem with asking this question is that my stakeholders could become more self conscious about the interactions they are having with their peers. Therefore I think that I will need to do some follow up with them after asking this to see if they have become more aware of the content of their interactions or if it has limited their interactions in any way.

Later on in this article it talks about how some of the students in a study felt inferior to their more privileged peers. This stems from the perceived academic superiority of the middle and upper class students. A few of their participants spoke about being intimidated by their classmates who came from more privileged backgrounds.

“So the last thing you want to do is open your mouth, because you know that they’re going to be talking about you afterwards, saying “my god, she’s so stupid.” So you’re just so scared. And so as a result I virtually said nothing, I was really intimidated, I was really, really scared […] I didn’t want to open my mouth. And it’s that sense of “I’m the bottom of the pile. They’re so much better than me, and I can’t open my mouth because of that, because I’m so scared.” (Interview, UK, 2007, Nicole, 20 years, law student)“

From my own experience, I relate to this. The first term at CSM I was so intimidated by my cohort – I thought everyone was smarter than me and had more valid points to raise in class. I was described by one classmate as shy, because I never spoke. But the truth is, I didn’t want anyone to think I was stupid and wonder why I was there. I didn’t feel worthy to be at such a prestigious school and reading this study has made me realise how many other students across the country could potentially feel like that. It’s an awful feeling and one that isn’t conducive to good mental health.

“The students were constantly engaged in an exhausting process of self-surveillance in order to monitor their behaviour and conform to unfamiliar, and sometimes inexplicable codes of behaviour. As they struggled with a sense of not fitting in socially, of failing to find a place to belong culturally within elite higher education, the least stressful option was often to remove themselves physically from the causes of their discomfort—the privileged majority at Southern university.“

This is something I have planned to asked my stakeholders about – whether they are hyper-aware of how they act around those of their peers who are from a higher social class, and if this is having a negative affect on their university experience. I find the study that these quotes were taken from fascinating. I think that Diane Reay, Gill Crozier and John Clayton have published a study that is very different from the other research that I found about working class students in higher education and it is very thought provoking. As a working class student, now I find myself analysing how I am acting around people from my cohort and wondering if I am experiencing uncomfortable interactions with others and not realising it.

References:

Reay, D. (2021). The working classes and higher education: Meritocratic fallacies of upward mobility in the United Kingdom. European Journal of Education, 56(1). doi:10.1111/ejed.12438.

Lareau, A. and Ferguson, S., 2017. Cultural exclusion of upwardly mobile college students. American Sociological Association August, 12, p.2017. 

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A Good Reason

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Zuleika asked why my current research question focuses on female students particularly. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t have a great answer. I mean, apart from being a female student from a lower income background, I didn’t have any research or statistics to back this up. It was suggested to me that in order to focus solely on female students, I need a good reason eg. some data or research to back this up.

So I found some.

A 2019 article in The Guardian draws attention to the lack of diversity in universities. Once one looks past the slightly alarmist headline about over half the universities in England having less than 5% of poor white students, the article is actually very interesting. They break the country down into LPNs (low participation neighbourhoods) and talk about how white young people who receive free school meals are less likely to attend university than those who come from Traveller backgrounds. The article goes on to mention that of all the university applications from students from a LPN, only 22% are accepted and 50% of universities only accept less than 20% of applications from these potential students.

And then gender is mentioned.

“Of the higher education providers who responded to a survey by Neon, fewer than 40% were doing outreach work specifically with white males and fewer than 12% with white females from low-participation backgrounds.“

Later in the article it goes on to mention that white disadvantaged male students are the least likely of every ethnic group to attend university. However, this means that proportionally across universities, the majority of working class students will be female.

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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/14/half-of-universities-england-have-fewer-than-5-poor-white-students

https://www.educationopportunities.co.uk/news/new-report-shows-differences-in-white-working-class-students-going-to-university-by-higher-education-provider/

Glossary of Terms

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Working class student – a student who is the first in their immediate family to wish to study at university. Someone who has upward mobility and who has the desire to have a better life than their parents. A student who has to had to sacrifice a lot of things to be at university and able to complete their course.

Saviourism – using research or interventions as a way of ‘saving’ working class students from being working class. Showing them off as though they’re rare and meant to be stared at as an illustration of diversity.

Upward Social Mobility – the goal of wanting a better life than the one that your parents have had, especially in terms of the career you choose to enter into.

LPN – Low Participation Neighbourhood. Students who come from an area that has the least number of students entering higher education are referred to as coming from a LPN.

Imposter phenomenon/syndrome – Imposter syndrome, originally called imposter phenomenon, is the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.

Arts education environment – a university which solely teaches creative subjects